


Convenient

by writer_zo



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pining, Short, sorta - Freeform, there's no sex involved but trust me... ivo is at least a switch if not a sub, weird musings on the title
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_zo/pseuds/writer_zo
Summary: Dr. Robotnik keeps Agent Stone around because he is efficient, loyal, and convenient. He's a good henchman, if a weak-minded human. Isn't he?
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 36
Kudos: 417





	Convenient

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I don't know what this is. I'm just vibing, man.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik knows that humanity is a slave to convenience. The fire was replaced by the furnace which was replaced by the oven which was devoured by the humming one-minute microwave. People have a habit of disposing of things that are inconvenient to them, and things become inconvenient when they fall into one of two categories: _obsolete_ or _burdensome_.

To his parents, whoever they damn well were, he had fallen into the latter category. He was an orphan, sure, but that was not the reason he had grown up in an orphanage—no, he had grown up in an orphanage because his father and mother were _busy_ , or maybe _poor_ , were any of two thousand one hundred and five excuses Ivo had come up with while wondering if they’d ever return for him. When the mistress of the orphanage had informed him, with eyes like those in a dead fish and the delicacy of a garbage disposal, that his parents had died in a car crash long after they had abandoned him on the doorstep as a baby, Ivo stopped wondering.

As he grew older, Ivo, like any other human—though he was by no means like any other human—began to value convenience. He began to dispose of everything inconvenient to him when the opportunity arose, piece by piece, bit by bit. His tears went first, dry and silent, then his compassion, then that boy from school broke his nose and sent his mercy and blood spilling away into the hot summer pavement and the party really began. A convenient life was a good, brutal one, one that made you a king and made your enemies eat and drink through straws.

That was why he had hired Stone. Convenience.

Ivo’s boots clicked against the pavement like chips of ice, sharp and clear despite the chatter and hum of instruments and activity around him. He could feel the power surge that had happened here, prickling through the air like quills along the little parts of his skin that were exposed. His meeting with the Sergeant or Lieutenant or whatever the hell that man had called himself had been productive—entertaining, even, and now he was free to examine the site of the electromagnetic pulse while he waited for a drone to send back the evidence he knew they would find.

Behind him, Stone trailed with a pleasant smile on his face, back stick-straight, demeanor more approachable than Ivo would have liked but not so welcoming that Ivo would have to shout at him again. He rounded the diamond and started back toward his truck, the device on his wrist humming with the alert that one of his drones had found something, presumably of pressing and immense value. His robots were so convenient that he hadn’t even had to take a step into the forest.

He slowed as he realized that the path to the door of his truck was obstructed. A green-suited army lackey stood in front of it, his back to Ivo and Stone, inspecting the vehicle, looking up at the onyx of its side with his hands on his hips.

“Stone,” Ivo said, teeth pressing together, “did I _tell_ the brainless cannon-fodder to look at my truck, or did I tell them to stay at the perimeter of camp?”

“You told them to stay at the perimeter, Doctor,” Stone said, coldly. Ivo forced a smirk down at being called _Doctor_. Always Doctor—Stone never got familiar. Stone was a human, sure, but he knew who to give his damn respect to.

“Alright,” Ivo said, striding forward with twice the speed he had been using, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Alright, alright. Hellooo, Private, I’m sure you’re very interested in my state-of-the-art tactical vehicle, but I have business to do, so if you’d kindly _move out of my doorway_ —”

The man in green turned around to face Ivo, and Ivo stilled, blood congealing into rage. The flat-faced man had the same closed, _stupid_ expression of the child who’d beaten Ivo all of those years ago, and it made Ivo’s gut turn to see it so close again.

“Sir,” the man said, voice flat and leaden, “I don’t care about whatever little power trip you’re on. I’m here to guard the vehicle. Just step around me and go in. We can’t leave this unguarded while a terrorist-level threat could—”

Ivo groaned and threw his hands in the air. “Step around you? Why? Why do we _need_ a guard at my vehicle? It opens to _me_. It is _mine._ I am on the verge of solving this, you _simple_ —”

“Doctor?” Stone interrupted. Ivo whirled, pointing a finger just below Stone’s chin.

“ _What?_ ” he snapped, voice tight as a drawn bow.

Stone swallowed, leaning away from the brandished finger, Adam’s Apple bobbing on his throat, and then gave Ivo a winning smile. “If you go in—check on that alert, y’know—I can handle this man. You’ve done so much today.”

And this was where convenience burned Ivo. Because yes, he could leave Stone to discipline this man, but that would take the satisfaction out of reaming him himself. But then again, reading this man his every fault would take quite a while, and the device on his wrist was warming as it hummed and whined for his attention, and so he nodded—tightly, grudgingly—and brushed roughly past the man and into his truck, retracting the ramp and shutting himself in.

The inside of the truck was blessedly silent. It was soundproof, marred by nothing but the hum and whirr of trillions of bits of data beings passed along like blood through veins, and it was Ivo’s haven. He turned and gazed with vindication at the footprint glowing red and blue on the screen, breathing in deeply, spreading his arms out around him. There it was. The key, the evidence only his lovely, wonderful, _perfect_ robots could have discovered for him. And it was his time to examine it.

But he did not. Because Ivo was not a machine. And he was suddenly curious.

So, unwilling to step back outside and interrupt what could be happening, he rolled his fingers together and with a thrum of power brought up the surveillance feed that showed the outside of the truck.

Just in time to see Stone punch the man square in the jaw.

Ivo’s mouth opened silently, then he frantically waved his left hand like a conductor bringing in the strings to raise the volume of the surveillance.

 _What the hell_?

“What the hell?” the man from the army said, pressing a hand to his lip. He began to stand, but not before Stone crossed to him and grabbed him by the collar, hauling him to his feet with more strength than his wiry frame should have been able to hold.

“I said _listen to me_ , you brainless fuck,” Stone said, voice rumbling with an anger that Ivo had never _seen_ , had never in all of his calculations even conceived could come from him. “Dr. Robotnik is a smarter man than you could be in a thousand lifetimes, and the fact that you think that you need to _guard_ his vehicle proves how right I am.”

“I’m being prudent,” the soldier said, still baffled, still wrinkling his brow and trying to wrap his head around Stone’s change in demeanor.

“Ooh, _prudent_. That’s a big word for such a little boy,” Stone hissed, still holding the man by the collar, still leveling a stare that could sear through steel at the man point-blank. “Tell me. Why do you think that the doctor’s truck would need to be guarded when the doctor himself is more dangerous than everyone in your pathetic excuse for a platoon put together?”

“I don’t—”

“Because even my doctor’s defense is a _fucking offense_ ,” Stone said. “If you were an enemy of the doctor’s and you tried to enter that truck, you’d be eviscerated like a pig in a meat grinder. He doesn’t need a guard. In fact, judging by the look in his eyes when he went into that truck, _you do_.”

Ivo hadn’t realized that he was sitting, chin propped up in his hands, eyes glued to the screen, until he saw Stone say that. He should have been looking at the footprint. He should have been taking advantage of the convenience of having Stone around. _My doctor. What did he mean, “my doctor?”_

“I—I’m going to—” the soldier stammered, red-faced and indignant.

“What? Speak up,” Stone said. His eyes, dark and sharp, glimmered with malice. “I can’t hear you through the boot in your mouth, _Private_.”

And with a thrust of his arm, he sent the man careening away, sputtering and gasping as Stone smoothed his black suit and affixed his smile to his face like a mask.

Ivo realized that he, too, was smiling. And he quickly, just before Stone could come in, closed the surveillance feed, muting it, silencing it and dragging his eyes along the footprint to deduce that it was extraterrestrial, to deduce what he had already suspected.

And then Stone entered, and they spoke—Ivo called him useless, a fool, but he did not sting with the words, did not go for Stone’s throat, because the specter of Stone’s face was in his mind’s eye all the while, angular, furious, powerful.

That night, as he laid in bed hours later, he imagined Stone—Stone, eyes sharp, mind quick, stronger than he looked under his caring, simpering exterior—looking him dead in the eyes and calling him _my doctor._ And then he imagined Stone, smiling, close to his ear, breath warm on his neck, calling him _Ivo_. _My Ivo_.

And he felt something stir in his heart that was anything but convenient.


End file.
